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Wednesday, May 4, 2016

4/5/16: Canaries of Growth are Off to Disneyland of Debt

Kids and kiddies, the train has arrived. Next stop: that Disneyland of Financialized Growth Model where debt is free and debt is never too high…

Courtesy of Fitch:

Source: @soberlook

The above in the week when ECB’s balancehseet reached EUR3 trillion marker and the buying is still going on. And in the month when estimates for Japan’s debt/GDP ratio will hit 249.3% of GDP by year end

What all of the above really is missing is one simple catalyst to tie it all together. That catalysts is the realisation that not only the Central Banks are to be blamed for ‘allowing the excesses of leverage’ to run amok, but that the entire economic policy space in the advanced economies - from the central banks to fiscal policy to financial regulation - has been one-track pony hell-bent on actively increasing leverage, not just allowing it.

Take Europe. In the EU, predominant source of funding for companies and entrepreneurs is debt - especially banks debt. And predominant source of funding for Government deficits is the banking and investment system. And in the EU everyone pays lip service to the need for less debt-fuelled growth. But, in the end, it is not the words, but the deeds that matter. So take EU’s Capital Markets Union - an idea that is centred on… debt. Here we have it: a policy directive that says ‘capital markets’ in the title and literally predominantly occupies itself with how the system of banks and bond markets can issue more debt and securitise more debt to issue yet more debt.

That Europe and the U.S. are not Japan is a legacy of past policies and institutions and a matter of the proverbial ‘yet’, given the path we are taking today.

So it’s Disneyland of Debt next, folks, where in a classic junkie-style we can get more loans and more assets and more loans backed by assets to buy more assets. Public, private, financial, financialised, instrumented, digitalised, intellectual, physical, dumb, smart, new economy, old economy, new normal, old normal etc etc etc. And in this world, stashing more cash into safes (as Japanese ‘investors’ are doing increasingly) or into banks vaults (as Munich Re and other insurers and pension funds have been doing increasingly) is now the latest form of insurance against the coming debt markets Disneyland-styled ‘investments’.

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This blog represents my personal views and is not reflective of the views or opinions held by any company, contractor, client or employer I work for currently or have worked for in the past. These views are not an endorsement to take any action in the markets or of any political position, figures or parties.

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